However I do think you are being overly sensitive to people who believe in State's rights. (I would repeal the 17th Amendment for instance) At this point in history labeling those who believe in State's rights as racist is unfair at best.

Do you believe that those on the Left also have this obligation to distance themselves from the Left's past? How do you feel for instance about the prevalence among the Left in deifying Che Guevera? Do Pro-choice activists have to distance themselves from their pioneers like Margaret Sanger whose views on race and population control are so unpalatable today?

How do you account for the differences in the way that the Left and the right deal with their members and accountablity?

Studds V Foley? (sexual impropiety with pages)

Nixon V Bill Clinton? ( improper conduct in judicial proceedings)

Lott V Hillary Clinton (comments on race)

I think that far too often the Left forces the Right to be defensive about their positions as a tactic in an unfair and intellectually dishonest manner.

Gahrie, states' rights ideology has been a powerful force in American politics and Constitutional law, and continues to be influential on the mainstream Right. Che Guevara's influence is limited to the fashion choices of fringe college students. There is simply no comparison.

Unless I'm doing something wrong, Bloggingheads is incompatible with dial-up. I realize only losers are still on dial-up, but there are millions of us losers out here! And I'm able to watch stuff on other web sites so I don't see why it's impossible for Bloggingheads to make it compatible.

There should be sound-only versions of the diavlog. I say "versions" because I'm addicted to the 1.8x speedup (it might have something do with my brain being re-wired by video games; I was playing while listening to Ann and Jonah. One can't really do that with most TV shows)

You failed to address the Sanger question, which is much more on point.

If we on the Right have to constantly state our opposition to racism when ever we support State's rights, why doesn't the Left have to state their opposition to eugenics when ever they support abortion and birth control? Especially when you read these "real world" facts:

"Black women are almost four times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are 2.5 times as likely."

All diavlogs have an audio only version. Simply click into the page it is on and then scroll down a bit and look on the right side.

http://bloggingheads.tv/completed/bhTV12216AJ.mp3

It has an unfortunately high quality encoding considering the source is cheap computer mics and weighs in at about 35MB but it does exist. You can also download the video which usually runs about 140MB.

Dang Ann! I'm only 25 minutes in right now, but you are so combative! You act as though Jonah should have a complete understanding of you but clearly you haven't taken the time to understand Jonah. You know I love you, but you can't expect Jonah to have an understanding of nuances you laid out AFTER he responds to what you actually wrote. "You're not a mind reader and you're a bad one."

Meanwhile your position that conservatives need to uniquely be in a constant state of prostration over the sins of the past that have been repeatedly repudiated before we were even born is incredibly frustrating and a stale lefty tactic not worthy of you. I'm not apologizing for anyone but myself and neither should you. It's either a good idea or it ain't. "I'm not responsible for your sense of smell."

And the sad thing is that it is such a waste of an opportunity to have an engaging intellectual discourse with Jonah, who would blush if he read this, is to me practically a symbol of contemporary mainstream conservative thought/attitude. Perhaps I'm engaging in fantasy, but I think you have far far far more in common with Jonah than you do the with anyone at KOS, MoveOn, Ed Garvey not to mention the leadership of the Democratic Party including Hillary, Kennedy, Pelosi, etc. They've truly Moved On and left you behind.

You went back to your normal devastatingly charming self and had lots of interesting questions. If you guys get together again I hope you will give Jonah a chance for a more friendly intellectual debate on the political topics.

Loafing Oaf: Look in the right sidebar for Download/Podcast. That should work (as opposed to the streaming version). There are also two speed options for the streaming (right under the picture).

Gerald: You're forgetting that we were also at a 9 hour conference together on the subject. Also, I was giving him a chance to respond. I state my position and impose an interpretation, and he's free to give his side. I was combative, because: 1. I had -- as I say in the diavlog -- sat through 9 hours of celebrating a man by talking about abstract ideas that were, in real life, used strongly and repeatedly -- in Jonah's magazine -- to rail against desegregation! He wanted to rely on saying that he didn't believe in the specifics about what those ideas meant at the time. Imagine someone wanting to talk about Communism purely in the abstract -- Great theory isn't it? -- and trying to disqualify any discussion of the harms connected with the theory historically. Come on, let's be intellectuals! I wouldn't sit still for that. In any case, look at some of Jonah's old diavlogs. He normally shows up ready to fight and makes no bones about talking the other person down and dominating. I was determined not to let that happen.... though I admit that if I could have seen his face, I wouldn't have been as aggressive.

Without going into a lengthy explanation, I did read your comment exactly like Jonah did; and I too found it "odd". But you acquitted yourself very well in explaining what you intended.

You shouldn't have taken his comment as an attack on you (although this might help your chances at winning that conservative blog diva title). =)

Your choice of rhetoric, "getting the stink of racism off of federalism," struck a chord with Jonah for a reason; liberals use that "stink," not only to discredit the idea of federalism, but to intimate anybody who believes in it is a racist.

I just noticed something. Jonah takes offense about the cult comment. You say, "I didn't say it was a cult, I said it was like cult-like." You took offense about the odd comment. And Jonah says, "I didn't say that, I said the post was odd!" You see, it's all a misunderstanding. =)

ASX said..."Gosh, Ann, it's nice to see you so agressively attacking the legacy of racism. I had no idea you were so unconservative on at least this one particular topic."

If it is "unconservative" to "agressively attack[] the legacy of racism," we presumably infer that you think that the conservative position on "the legacy of racism" ranges from disinterest to disdain, and that it would not be conservative to "agressively attack[] the legacy of racism."

Gahrie, I think you're missing a crucial distinction between individual bad people and ideologies. If one advocates an ideology that has led to disastrous results in practice, then one is under an obligation to disconnect one's ideology from those results. Thus states' rights advocates must take care to disassociate themselves from slavery and Jim Crow, since those practices were defended in states'-rights terms. Similarly, communists should take care to dissassociate themselves from purges and forced famines, for the same reason.

Neither conservatives nor liberals, however, are under a similar obligation to disassociate oneself from every nasty individual who may be broadly considered of the Right or of the Left.

States' rights is an ideology has been used to defend slavery and Jim Crow. Sanger, by contrast, is a person who had eugenicist ideas and was pro-choice. But pro-choice arguments have not been used to defend eugenicist practices. That's why your analogy is inapt.

Birth control and abortion have had the real world effect of not only supporting eugenics, but are in effect eugenics in action.

Many people quite openly make the (unsupportable) statement that there are now millions fewer criminals today then there would have been, because of abortion. This is openly an arguement that abortion should continue to be legal precisely because of it's eugenic effects.

It is also simply undeniable that abortion disproportionally effects the poor, and minorities.

So in reality, there is actually much more justification for making the Left answer for the evils of abortion and birth control than there is in continuing to harass the Right for their support of State's rights. Especially since the idea of State's rights is fundamental to our Republic, and mandated by the Constitution.